


wherever i go (you’re my home)

by inyourorbit



Series: We Are Here [1]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Acceptance, Arizona - Freeform, Blackwell Academy (Life is Strange), Characters more or less just mentioned from both the first and second game, Chloe is very much.. Chloe, F/F, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Canon, Post-Save Chloe Price Ending, Rewind Powers (Life Is Strange), Road Trips, Some angst, Travel, cursing, past amberprice, pricefield
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:01:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24452557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inyourorbit/pseuds/inyourorbit
Summary: Max is standing next to Chloe at what feels like the edge of the world.For the second time.
Relationships: Maxine "Max" Caulfield/Chloe Price
Series: We Are Here [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1767949
Comments: 5
Kudos: 36





	wherever i go (you’re my home)

There’s a romanticized version to all this. A version with no consequences. A version where everyone lives.

 _Everyone_.

Chloe. Arcadia Bay. Nothing gets ruined and destroyed and shot down to hell. 

And Max doesn’t feel an overwhelming guilt settling low in the pit of her stomach, knotting up tighter and tighter the more she thinks about it, no matter what path it is she chose.

But that wasn’t realistic.

.

 _Chloe_. 

For Max, it was the obvious choice. Maybe it wasn’t. It hurt no matter what but Chloe was a constant. Even when Max wasn’t there, gone in Seattle, she knew Chloe was still there. Through the texts and letters she consistently sent though they always remained unanswered from Max.

One week with Chloe wasn’t near enough time to make up for the moments she wasn’t there for. For bailing when Chloe was going through one of the toughest times in her life. After her dad died. Max will always feel sorry for that abandonment. 

Hell, she didn’t even recognize Chloe when she first saw her again. Choppy short blue hair, tattooed, and complete with a shitty attitude. But still as tall and lanky as ever with that mischievous smile she broke out with rarely but it was her. Undeniably. 

An impulse to reach out for a complete stranger in life-threatening danger triggered some unknown - maybe dormant? - power. Or maybe it was that bond, the connection, Max and Chloe once had that brought it about. Max couldn’t tell it was Chloe, but the power did. It seems plausible enough. Anything did at that point. 

If they weren’t meant to be together, why would the power even exist?

A week wasn’t enough. It wasn’t fucking fair. 

.

It’s hard to accept at first, for both of them, Max thinks. Of course it is. A town wiped out and left in ruins and it was all Max’s fault. 

“You can’t think like that,” Chloe would whisper in Max’s ear, her lips pressed firmly against her temple and her arms tight around the smaller girl.

“But—“ Max starts, the guilt feeling too heavy a couple nights into being on the road and driving far far away from the town they both grew up in. After respects paid, and Chloe and Max cried over the losses of Joyce and other friends. Chloe visited her dad - where he’s buried - one last time. She never said bye to David, never told him they were leaving or where they were going.

They’re in some dingy and drab motel room now.

“No way, Max,” Chloe would stop, “You fucking saved me dude. You saved me and we’re here right now. Together.”

 _Just like it was always meant to be,_ Max entertains in her mind, feeling calmer that yeah- Chloe is right here. She’s alive alive _alive_ and her heart’s beating and her breath is spilling gently from her lips and they’re both okay. 

.

Chloe kisses her hard the next morning, tasting of coffee and the cigarettes Max keeps trying to get her to stop smoking. 

It was the first time since they’d watched the storm roll in from the shore, taking out everything they once knew. Never talking about that day much, they hadn’t addressed that kiss.

But they both knew what they felt and it was just them now. _Here_.

Max melts into the kiss like her life depends on it and it really doesn’t seem all that far-fetched considering.

When Chloe pulls away, her eyes are red-rimmed and puffy and Max doesn’t realize hers are too until Chloe is reaching out with both hands and wiping the tears away.

“I-uh, I guess I haven’t said it yet but thanks for saving me,” Chloe’s voice is hoarse and she’s finding it hard to keep eye contact anytime she displays too much emotion in front of someone but she does it. Keeps her eyes steadfast on Max the whole time. 

Max kisses her this time, it’s soft and slow and not nearly long enough as she tastes the saltiness of their mingled tears on their connected lips, only pulling away to whisper, “Always, Chloe.”

She means it more than she’s ever meant anything. 

.

In the wake of Joyce’s death, once Chloe is able to accept it in some broken way - her life in exchange for her mom’s - she reaches out to David. Because the guilt crashes into her _hard_ and he’s kind of the only family she has besides Max. Her dad, Rachel, her mom.. they’re all gone. 

Max encourages it. Sounds kind of fake deep to herself but Chloe takes it to heart when Max starts spewing stuff about how time is precious. Now that she doesn’t fuck with it, doesn’t rewind it at all to draw out a moment or relive it again. She just accepts it for the here and now and treasures what she has with those still in her life. Chloe, her parents.

It’s the exact motivation Chloe needs to press the call icon next to David’s number on her phone screen.

They argue a bit, the first few times they speak with one another. David lacks understanding when it comes to Max and Chloe leaving, not bothering to look back. He thinks it was selfish and irresponsible. The moment he had made it out of the bunker, Mark Jefferson’s darkroom, the whole fucking world was crumpled to ground - _and how could you just leave like that Chloe?_ Max would hear as she sat next to Chloe while the girl had the call on speaker.

They find common ground, a balance. Chloe starts checking in with David as often as every week to update him on where they are, tell him how her and Max are doing. 

She stops calling him Step-douche. Isn’t quite ready to call him dad, probably never will.

They settle on just David. 

.

Max doesn’t use her power. 

Even stops taking polaroids for a time. Thoughts swirling and swirling, and the nightmares haunting.

She dreams of being surrounded by photos, thousands of polaroids littering the floor beneath her feet and the walls and _everywhere_ and there’s never anyway out. She’ll fall into one and be in some fucked up timeline only to be spat out and thrown right into another one. One where Chloe’s dead or paralyzed or where Kate jumps off the roof. One where Jefferson gets away with all of it and keeps continuing. The number of women and students missing and dead piling up one by one.

She imagines the covered bodies in the street in the wake of the storm, Nathan’s voicemail and the sound of his terrified words as he warns her and utters an apology. Her last moments with Joyce, and Frank, and hugging Warren. Never realizing that _this is it_.

Then everyone is falling away away _away_.

She’s kept awake some nights. Other nights, she sleeps but the visions of their world ripping apart at the seams jolt her awake and her loud breaths as if she’s gasping for air to prove she’s still alive rouse Chloe from her own sleep. 

Max calls her parents more now than she ever used to while living separate from them when she was attending Blackwell. To hear their voices, to solidify that she is here. Chloe is here. They are here.

And she is fine.

.

They do their own thing for awhile.

Driving from here to there, staying a couple days or weeks at a time somewhere. They talk about settling down at some point, actually living in their own space that they can call home. At least having a base - somewhere to go back to when they get traveling out of their system.

But life on the road treats them good enough for now. 

Chloe let’s her hair grow out, light brown roots running into a faded blue that’s now starting to take on some sort of green color. She’s looking a little shaggier than usual these days and Max teases her for it. Up until Chloe starts pouring like the giant baby that she is at which point Max quiets her complaints with a kiss and a quiet _I’m just kidding._ It does the trick every time.

She covers up her tattoo, over half of her right arm blacked out with ink over what was there. Her former tattoo no longer having the same meaning it used to.

Meanwhile, Max cuts her hair. Gets more comfortable in her own skin as just Max as she is now. No Blackwell student photographer Maxine Caulfield - who was a little unsure of herself and insecure. No, she’s out here now. 

Just Max. With the title of _Chloe’s girlfriend_ proudly tacked on to her name now.

The girlfriend thing was a thing before they ever said it out loud or declared it official. It was what they were even without the words.

But the first time Chloe called Max her girlfriend when she was introducing them to some random person they’d met along their way to somewhere, Max felt so much pride and warmth flood into her chest. 

“Girlfriend?” Max asked later as they settled back in Chloe’s truck.

“Hell yes,” Chloe grinned, leaning across the center console to press a quick peck against Max’s lips before they took off. 

_Girlfriend it is._

.

David’s in Arizona.

It didn’t take much convincing from Max to get Chloe to decide to go there. Even if she didn’t exactly openly admit it, she wanted to see David. Hadn’t seen him since in Arcadia Bay when it all... happened. All of the past starting to feel like some sort of fever dream they’re not sure really happened. Proof is there, though. Too real to deny even if it’s easier some days. 

They spot David’s aluminum trailer almost immediately when they see their old childhood artwork they made together - the art that once used to be out against the fence in the backyard at Chloe’s old Arcadia Bay home - set up against David’s current home. It’s old, was old when they left their, but it’s a strangely cathartic thing to see and know it made through the storm. A piece of them from before life wreaked havoc over everything. It’s sweet David took it with him. 

Max is surprised at how easily Chloe falls into David’s embrace when he opens his arms to her the second she’s hopped out of the truck and walked to the other side to greet him. 

Max trails a little behind, smiles softly at the scene before her.

David let’s Chloe go and nods in the other girl’s direction, “Max.”

“Hey, David.”

When they make it into the small home, there’s not a whole lot to take in. But Chloe’s eyes almost immediately hone in on the single photograph David has taped to his fridge. 

It’s of David and Joyce, with Chloe standing slightly behind them clad with blue hair and that beanie looking every bit like the jaded teenager she remembered herself to be.

She traces her finger delicately over the image of her mother, so gently as though she’s afraid Joyce will disappear from the picture right before eyes. Chloe jumps in surprise and she feels a heavy hand upon her shoulder. It’s David.

“There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t look at that picture, Chloe.”

Chloe struggles to find her words, nodding before letting out a raspy _I miss her._

Max stands back, thinks about the things she wish she could have changed. 

If it meant Chloe could still be here, too.

.

They had a long drive there. 

The first night in Arizona they have dinner with David and catch up. He leaves the trailer to them for the night, the next days. Says he’s crashing and on the couch in friends RV a few spots down from his own. 

There’s not much to do in the middle of fucking nowhere in the desert at night, when the closest town is about an hour away and there’s not an abundance of people around. Not that either of them are major fans of people. Max is more of the people-watching observant type and Chloe, well, Chloe likes Max and that’s kind of where she draws the line. 

Chloe was always going to let Max be the one to initiate it first. Knowing it needed to be her and completely on her terms. Whether it be because of Max’s lack of experience or how shy she could get, Chloe never wanted to rush her. Their relationship has been slow moving one despite being together pretty much every waking moment and traveling for a long stretch of time. It’s never been about sex or anything physical. 

“Are you sure?”

Chloe asks at least twice, pulling away from Max’s insistent lips as girl chases after them. Telling Chloe _yes, I’m sure_ more than once as she pulls Chloe’s mouth back against her own.

Max wants this. She has wanted it, but her thoughts earlier made her feel like Chloe just wasn’t quite close enough. That Chloe was here but she almost wasn’t. Max has seen Chloe... She’s seen Chloe die more times than she can count. More ways than she count. In reality, the past, and the nightmares that barely haunt her these days.

And she’s in love with Chloe. Tells her so everyday. Tells her in this moment, knowing Chloe will say it back like she always does. 

What it all comes down to, really, is that Max needs Chloe. In whatever way, any way, all ways. 

Chloe takes the hint, stops making sure every few moments that Max is sure and needs an out. _But tell me if you want to stop,_ are her finishing words before connecting their lips back together, before peppering kisses down Max’s neck. Before exploring the expanse of her torso and breasts with her mouth while feeling the soft skin beneath her fingertips, slowly trailing her way down to Max’s thighs where she needs Chloe to touch her most. 

Max comes with Chloe’s name on the tip of her tongue, mouth pressed against Chloe’s neck with one hand tangled in her hair and the other gripping at her back.

Afterward, Chloe holds Max close as they exchange slow and languid kisses. Just existing in this space with each where it feels like time isn’t moving.

Chloe breaks the silence, shattering the mood, as she speaks out into the darkness of the trailer after what had to be an hour of total quiet.

“Is it weird we just fucked in my step-dad’s bed?” Chloe asks, her laugh boisterous and obnoxious as Max groans - the thought never crossing her mind while it was happening - her cheeks flushing a bright shade of red.

“Chloe...” Max whines, only mildly annoyed, “That’s what you’re thinking about?”

Chloe just laughs and laughs. Some sort of sweet revenge or victory in a way, for how David cramped her style for the couple years they lived together. When she was dating Rachel and David had just moved in, setting rules and really taking his role maybe too seriously for a guy Chloe barely knew when she wasn’t looking for a new father figure in her life. She got busted way too many times for keeping her door closed when Rachel was over, David opening it without warning to catch them making out. He’d threaten to ban Rachel from entering his household. They were all empty words.

Joyce never fretted over it too much, only giving a Chloe and raised eyebrow and suggesting that maybe she should focus on studying a bit more than she focuses on Rachel. That even with the expulsion from Blackwell, she should try and get her GED.

Max notices how Chloe quiets, because it’s a side of Chloe that doesn’t happen often. The silent and thoughtful side, zoned out. 

“What’s on your mind?”

Chloe clears her throat, “Just, uh, just how things were for awhile. When David first moved in. And with—,” she hesitates for a beat, “with Rachel.”

“Oh,” Max feels an immediate sense of dread but Chloe pulls her closer, quells the onslaught of thoughts quickly rushing to the service because _it’s not like that._

Max never asked what exactly Rachel was to Chloe. Other than knowing that they were incredibly close and important to each other, she didn’t know what the labels were if there were any or anything like that. She’d scene Chloe’s lockscreen of her and Rachel and knew it was Chloe that tirelessly put up the missing person flyers.

She didn’t know what they had been but she knew they were something... _more_.

Chloe didn’t really want to talk about it much, but Rachel was sort of her first everything. All but her first love. That was all Max. In the beginning, now, and for as long as time lets them be. 

“I wouldn’t change anything, Max Caulfield.” 

Not anymore than Max would if she could. 

Of course Chloe wishes Rachel were still alive. 

But she’d still choose Max.

.

The next morning rolls around with the usual struggle of getting Chloe awake and out of bed. Max offers coffee and the promise of driving off a ways so Chloe can smoke some weed she has stashed in their truck without getting busted by David. 

Even if she is an adult, he still has his rules.

(And Chloe still has her vices.)

Legal or not. Doesn’t want the stuff around him or under his roof no matter where that roof may be.

David introduces them to the small tight-knit community. Arthur and Stanley, Karen, and Joan. It’s interesting, seeing him fit into this small group of people that seem like they were all searching for something different. An unfamiliar, but secure kind of life, they could fit into.

Max feels something. Something other than the grief that’s always carried with them. A feel of family and warmth.

They stay around for a few more days. 

Max starts taking pictures again. 

Something about here feels _safe_. She can’t put her finger on it, can’t put it into words. But she can capture it. 

There’s a stillness in the desert, that would feel stale anywhere else, that makes Max want to take her camera out of hiding. She still took it with everywhere, in case. Albeit, slightly out of sight.

That stillness, though. That was the trick. The feeling of time frozen and standing at a halt. No visions or dreams of time slipping backwards or forward.

She snaps a few of David and his surrounding neighbors, the nature around them.

Max takes a selfie of Chloe and herself in the desert, blue sky above and sand beneath, cacti everywhere. 

So different from the lush forest area surrounding arcadia bay, no water all around them. 

Just sand and heat. And lots of fucking rocks.

.

The Grand Canyon is beautiful. 

Even with Chloe bitching the whole way, Max wouldn’t change the experience for a second.

Max is standing next to Chloe at what feels like the edge of the world. _For the second time._ Looking out over the expanse of a place unknown. This time, there is no storm or death or regrets. It‘s all in the past.

There is just.. _them._

Once they’ve lived past the storm long enough, the memories fade into something less painful. Every single memory Max has from every single alternate timeline she’s lived through, and every single memory and feeling her and Chloe have together of the things they’ve let go fade away.

Consequences and all, this version is better.


End file.
